Unless otherwise indicated herein, the description provided in this section is not itself prior art to the claims and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
A cellular wireless network may include a number of base stations that radiate to define wireless coverage areas in which user equipment devices (UEs) such as cell phones, tablet computers, tracking devices, embedded wireless modules, and other wirelessly equipped communication devices (whether or not technically operated by a human user), can operate. In turn, each base station may be coupled with network infrastructure, including one or more gateways and switches, that provides connectivity with one or more transport networks, such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and/or a packet-switched network such as the Internet for instance. With this arrangement, a UE within coverage of the network may engage in air interface communication with a base station and may thereby communicate via the base station with various remote network entities or with other UEs.
In general, a cellular wireless network may operate in accordance with a particular radio access technology or “air interface protocol,” with communications from the base stations to UEs defining a downlink or forward link and communications from the UEs to the base stations defining an uplink or reverse link. Examples of existing air interface protocols include, without limitation, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA (e.g., Long Term Evolution (LTE) or Wireless Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX)), Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) (e.g., 1×RTT and 1×EV-DO), and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), among others. Each protocol may define its own procedures for registration of UEs, initiation of communications, handover of UEs between coverage areas, and functions related to air interface communication.
A typical cell site of a cellular wireless network may be configured to provide one or more respective wireless coverage areas such as a cell or cell sectors in which to serve UEs. In practice, each cell site may include a respective antenna configuration, as well as respective supporting cell site equipment, which may be coupled in turn with network infrastructure such as routers, switches, gateways, and the like.
With this arrangement, when the supporting cell site equipment receives from the network infrastructure data that is to be transmitted in a wireless coverage area, or the supporting cell site equipment itself generates such data for transmission, the supporting equipment may convert the data into a form suitable for transmission by the antenna configuration, and the antenna configuration may then output the data over the air in the wireless coverage area. For instance, the supporting equipment may encode the data and modulate the encoded data on a radio frequency (RF) carrier, the supporting equipment may then pass the modulated carrier to the antenna configuration for RF transmission, and the antenna configuration may then wirelessly output the modulated carrier.
Likewise, when the antenna configuration wirelessly receives from within such a coverage area a modulated RF carrier representing data, the antenna configuration may pass that modulated RF carrier to the supporting cell site equipment, and the supporting equipment may then process that communication to uncover the underlying data. For instance, the supporting equipment may demodulate the RF carrier to uncover encoded data and may then decode the encoded data to uncover the underlying data. The supporting equipment may then handle the data locally or pass the data along to the network infrastructure for handling, as appropriate.